Est. 2010 – "Dishonest, diversionary and pompous…"

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A Glorious Digital Revolution

The banning of certain voices from social media made me wonder – could the “revolution” desired by progressives be a negative action rather than a positive one? By that I mean that I wonder if it is possible that we could all get so intertwined in electronic networks – our banks, our utilities, our communications – and to a large extent now, our shopping – that a simple denial of those services could bring society down and place a very few elites in control of everything?

And no, I’m not auditioning to be the next Alex Jones – but reading the Wired article about what could happen if all of our satellites were knocked out got me thinking…and then today, I read about the Pentagon working with Amazon to put sensitive military data in the Cloud. It was just reported that even if you turned the location setting off on your Google devices or Chrome browser, Google was still tracking you.

It is certainly possible that if Google can track your location, Amazon knows your government records and financial institutions track your purchases, the combination of the three could triangulate the location of probably 90% of all firearms in America. Boom – a de facto gun registry. I usually buy my ammunition online and have it delivered to my door and if I’m buying my ammo online, it should be possible to extrapolate the type, caliber/gauge and number of the weapons I likely own. As a minimum, it is a sure bet that if I’m buying ammo, I have firearms.

What if…theoretically speaking, there were no guns, no jack-booted thugs or armies rolling down America’s streets “Red Dawn” style, what if it is a simple denial of access to money, information and services? How many people depend on electronic banking? ATMs? How many on online pharmacies? How many of us depend on the Internet to do our jobs and communicate with our families?

A few months ago, I wrote the following: Let me begin by asking you a question – how much hard cash do you have in your pockets right now? How many use debit or credit cards that rely on electronic transactions? What would happen to you and your family if only hard cash, silver, gold or barter was accepted as the only medium of exchange? How long would you last? Should it bother you if you have your paycheck direct deposited, all your transactions are either automatic drafts or electronic transfers and the only “money” you see are numbers on a screen or a bank statement that is emailed to you? What happens if the lights go out and you can no longer access your accounts?

We have undergone a remarkable centralization of our private and public data and have ceded huge chunks of our transactional existence to electronic systems. I do not fear Russian, Chinese, or Macedonian Server Farm hackers as much as I do American Digital Barons Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook and Bill Gates. The fact they are so powerful and lean progressive bothers me. These guys control technology and information that supports a huge percentage of the American economy.

The only real reason I have any sympathy for Elon Musk is that he seems to be a bit more a libertarian wild-card as compared to these guys.

Any time things are centralized, they become more susceptible to single points of failure – and single points of control. It is not impossible to imagine an Atlas Shrugged scenario where the government gathers a cadre of likeminded industry giants in a cooperative plan to make society “better” …and with everything digitized and online, the flip of a switch could spell disaster. The “glorious revolution” could begin and be over at the speed of light running through a fiber optic cable.

And that’s when the shooting starts.

I’m not saying it will happen, I’m just saying the possibility exists.